Yes, that's right. One more exam next week, then 2 weeks holidays and I will be one whole third of the way through my beauty therapy diploma.
I'm very surprised at myself for how well I've done and seem to be one of the best students in most of my classes so far, passing exams and assessment items 100% the first time around. But I'm trying of course not to get too confident as I'm sure next trimester is going to be even tougher.
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Home practice red block colour on
Jess (with added glitter!) |
I failed one of my practical exams on the first attempt so far and that was for nail fundamentals. In fact, everyone in my class failed the first time around because it wasn't really a subject that was given enough time for practice. The thing we all failed on was the painting of fingernails. We were required to do white French tips and solid red block colour. Everyone found the French tips to be the hardest, mainly because we all practiced on each other and we all have short nails because that's what the college requires as part of the dress code, but at home we were practicing on other people with long nails. At first we were expected to freehand the French tips, which I deem impossible to achieve on nails with no free edge, so most students (including myself) used a make up brush (I used a Models Prefer lip brush) to shape the white tips. The college says that it was a very harshly judged exam as they require very excellent quality of the students before we are permitted to go into the college clinic and perform the treatment on real clients.
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Home practice French tips
on Elli |
We were given Zoya nail polish, which I had thought to be a fairly good and expensive brand of polish, but the white polish and red polish we received was terrible quality. The white was sticky and gluggy and the red had ultra cuticle staining power, and we aren't allowed to bring our own polish unless we had a Material Safety Data Sheet for it, so we were expected to just deal with this crap polish. The Zoya nail polish remover they gave us in the kits was also terrible - it was very weak and had low acetone which made it very hard to clean up if polish got on the cuticles or skin. Some students even went home and topped up their polish remover with pure acetone to make it stronger.
I passed the nail painting on my second attempt thankfully, but still very much need many more hours of practice painting other people's nails. No two people nails are the same so it's pretty challenging and you need to practice on a huge variety of people.
So in this first trimester I have learnt eyelash and brow tinting and brow shaping, manicure and pedicure, full body Swedish massage, full body aromatic massage (incorporating essential oils with massage), how to give a basic facial (exam coming this Thursday), foundations of cosmetic chemistry (this was an online subject with 5 online quizzes), foundations of nutrition (also an online subject with one quiz) and foundations of anatomy and physiology (this subject was a mixture of online reading and an assessment workbook handed into my massage teacher).
On the cards for next trimester is temporary epilation (waxing - excluding Brazilian , advanced facials, Indian head massage, hot stone massage, reflexology (dreading this!) and clinic studies (which is where we spend a day a week providing beauty services to real clients in the college clinic).
We also finally received our uniforms a week ago - almost no point now that everyone is a third of the way through the course. it's not the most comfortable or well fitting uniform, and the college has adopted a new look and a new logo, which as a graphic designer I am not too fond of.
I hope that soon I will have more to share here, like tips and tricks, recommended products and tutorials!
